Death of Landscape (Bahrein, 2007)
The installation MEMORY OF MEMORIES, made in an old garage in the Bahrain’s capital Manama, is a collage of personal and collective memories. In it Anas Al-Shaikh incorporates the dream he had as a child of a tree on which bananas, pears and grapes were all growing, that he interpreted as a symbol for doing things differently. He also incorporates masculine and feminine freedoms, and also photographs of armaments, which are reminders of the many wars in the Arab world, such as those between Iraq and Iran and Israel and Palestine. Anas Al-Shaikh visualises his sense of powerlessness in a photograph of four Arab men in front of a wall. ‘In our world we are not permitted to develop our own visions, ideas and skills,’ says the artist. ‘We are not permitted to decide what we will believe in.’
